


Why Him?

by Agdistis



Category: Cable and Deadpool, Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Cable POV, Feelings, Gen, Light Angst and Light Fluff, M/M, Protective Nathan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 07:54:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17638817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agdistis/pseuds/Agdistis
Summary: He wanted to ask him about it, but he couldn’t.‘So, what’s it like being hated in the most tolerant city on earth?’





	Why Him?

_Why him?_

He’d protested this time. Snapped back. “You don’t even know  _him_.” “You apparently don’t know me as well as you think you do, either.” “He was here when you weren’t.” “Yeah, and where were  _you_?” “Are you jealous of fucking  _Wade_?” (complete with a scoff he regretted – why was  _he_ , of all people, still throwing Wade under the bus?) “He’s more reliable than  _some_  people I know.” The passive aggressive, barbed words had rolled easily off his tongue. Too easily. He wasn’t used to hearing so many of his words before he’d chosen them. He usually left outbursts to others. To Irene. To Wade.

_Why him?_

He’d managed to stun Irene into silence, but not the question. Irene could be left behind in the office. Irene could be hurt. He regretted hurting her. He didn’t think he’d said anything too hurtful ( _had he_?) but he’d hurt her regardless. He regretted it because what he truly wanted to stop was the question and hurting Irene’s feelings didn’t stop the question.

_Why him?_

Everyone asked it. It was constant. It was as if he couldn’t take so much as a shit without someone knocking on the goddamned private bathroom stall door to ask  _him_  why agents from no fewer than seven government agencies were at their doorstep looking for one “Harry Sachz,” or why Wade was trying to bless Providence’s water supply when he was aware, or so they assumed, that some of their valued residents were vampires (or Draculas, as he called them, and maybe he  _was_  aware and god that would be so much  _worse_ ), as if  _he_  knew and was expected to constantly apologize and make up for his choice to spend time with him. Okay, maybe some of that was fair.

And yet, it  _wasn’t_. None of it was. Not the side-glances he caught when they walked through the streets together. Not the way mothers tightened their grip on their children’s hands when they passed him. Not the sharp intakes of breath from waiters when they delivered bills to him and almost (the  _horror_ ) touched his skin. Not the whispers he caught, so much louder than the speakers intended them to be, passing on rumors about Wade’s hallucinations. His sexual inclinations. His memory.  _‘Ha ha, he once came in this store three times in a row asking for the same thing. The last time, he was still holding it. You should have seen the look on his face when he realized. Total fruitloop.’_  (It had taken all of his willpower not to leave Wade’s side to choke that man.  _And why hadn’t Wade told him he was forgetting things again?_ ) Not the look of condescension and suspicion Siryn gave him when she thought his occasional hesitation to perform was a lazy excuse to get out of a mission rather than a fear of botching it when he wasn’t at his best. (Wasn’t she supposed to be his  _friend_? How could she still be this  _blind_?) Not the overwhelming psychic tension he felt in a room when Wade was just – just  _sitting_  there, wide-eyed and happy and talking about something he loved, utterly absorbed in his stories and recounting them with sweeping arm motions and lively voice impressions, leaving Cable constantly torn between getting swept away in his enthusiasm and shouting everyone else in the room down to stop their cruel mental chatter. He always ended on the former, not wanting to spoil Wade’s good mood by bringing attention to something that probably only he, a telepath, would be so sharply aware of in the first place. He didn’t know how much of it Wade still noticed. He was probably used to it by now, and it’s not like he remembered that much from before his Weapon X days anyway. He had no real frame of reference for respect (- _did he_?). He wasn’t a telepath like Cable, nor did he seem to be particularly observant when he wasn’t on a mission, except for all those times he  _was_ –

He wanted to ask him about it, but he couldn’t. _‘So, what’s it like being hated in the most tolerant city on earth?’_ No, he could never bring it up. Then again, maybe through his silence he was just leaving him stranded to deal with it alone. Maybe Wade knew and thought it wasn’t worth mentioning, or maybe he was embarrassed of it. Maybe he thought Cable wouldn’t want to hear about it. Maybe he knew and didn’t care. He couldn’t exactly read his mind to check. His was the only mind so shrouded to him, so disorganized and slippery. He could always feel its presence: vibrant, distinctive, so  _potent_ , so easy to find in a crowd, yet so… unclear, just like the man himself. It was like a color he didn’t quite have the word for. Sometimes he thought it was a blessing. Maybe Wade was right and he wouldn’t like what he saw. (His internet history was bad enough.) It also removed some temptations. The temptation to  _look_  in moments like these. And that was just it – he did want to see. He wanted to see everything.

_Why him?_

He wanted to give this broken but earnest man what he needed. He  _needed_  to say what Wade wanted to hear. He was unappealingly desperate to  _provide_. He liked that he  _could_  provide. It was reassuring, somehow. Reassuring that he had the right things to say, the right resources to offer. That he could sometimes guess what Wade was worried about while he was still cracking jokes and fooling everyone else to say what no one else in the damned world seemed willing to say. Sometimes the advice he had to give was even clever. It turned into a battle of wits between them some evenings, and where he lost at keeping up with Wade’s humor he won in cleverly countering Wade’s self-loathing, at least in the verbal arena. Wade didn’t always seem to  _feel_  better, but he was at least pushed to a place where he had nothing more to say, where hopefully he couldn’t so easily justify the way he felt anymore, for at least one night. Cable enjoyed thinking of insightful questions he could ask. He enjoyed knowing that Wade wanted to impress him and being able to tell him that he  _had_. He felt honored to know what no one else knew: that Wade was as scared as anyone else, that he had dreams, that he wept sometimes behind closed doors.

One time early on, after a long night of sparring, a few weeks of bad sleep, and a thoughtlessly phrased question, Wade had absently muttered that he  _wanted_ to be hated, that he felt guiltier when he wasn’t. Cable couldn’t forget how vulnerable he’d looked in the moment he realized what he’d said, how he’d winced and immediately averted his eyes, ashamed of the failure in his own filters and walls, something  _he_  considered so innocent. Predictably, the vulnerability was followed up by several weakly delivered jokes. Cable hadn’t responded that time, just quietly embraced him.

_Why him?_

Because everyone asked that.


End file.
